Knitting is one of my crafting hobbies. Knitting while watching tv lounging on the couch with Jonathan and the cat perched on the back of the couch.

This weekend Lucy decided that she wanted to sit on me. This is fairly normal, but I happened to be using longer circular needles as I am making a long scarf/cowl…and instead of on top of the knitting, as she usually parades across me to mash my parts into a comfortable nest, she went into the knitting: through the loop, between my arms, paws and head forward, as if she was working her way through a blanket to the optimal snuggling position on my lap with whiskers directly in my face. Jonathan tried to get a picture of it, but only managed a flashed shot of my arm. Silly little Lucy cat.

Lucy has no real sense of time. When we go in and out of the house, she generally behaves the same way all the time as if a dog greeting it’s master (but we all know, kitty just wants food).

Today I forgot to turn off the heater in the bathroom, so I had to return home. Lucy was at the door meowing at me and doing figure eights around my legs. Half-way to the bus stop I realized that I forgot my ring in the bathroom, so I returned home again. Lucy was at the door meowing at me, again. No figure eights this time, but she went and munched on her kibble and expertly flicking her tail where I needed to step in order to get to the front door. -sigh-

Who knows if she really has any concept of time. She might have thought three days had gone by.

I wouldn’t call Lucy an unintelligent animal. She knows how to get what she wants from us, usually by being cute or by nipping. She doesn’t take crap from anyone, including humans. She does things like all other cats do, eats one kibble mouthful at a time, plays with catnip toys, watches birds outside the window. But Lucy, like any creature on this planet becomes rather unintelligent when stressed.

The other night we had all snuggled down into bed for the night: lights were off, cat tucked in on my left side as usual. Then around 3 in the morning, she decided that it was time to bite me. I’m asleep, so I have no idea why she’s walking all over me, sniffing in my face, jumping off and onto the bed, roaming around the pillows, etc. At this point I’ve nudged her off of me about 5 times, pushed her off the bed a few, and overall ignored her attempts to wake me up. This line of behavior resulted in several bites all over my left arm. =(

Guh, this cat!

…her water bowl in the bedroom was empty…the water bowl in the living room next to her kibble was full…

On top of all of that this morning, about 5am I thought she had stopped breathing. She was curled up in her usual snail position for bed sleeping. Her fur was cold, her back was rigid, and a typical stroke of the side wasn’t resulting in the usual reaction. I panicked. Woke up Jonathan. Turned on the lights. Grumpy pants ran off to the living room looking very annoyed. The pumpkin head eventually came back and slept in the same exact way, except on my feet, where I could definitely feel her warmth and knew she was still breathing. I’m soooo glad tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I’ll have a day to de-stress…hopefully.

Jonathan insists that the Lucy has a B-spot. B as in bite. The odd things is that I’ve never encountered this B-spot and I’ve touched nearly every part of this cat, minus the sensitive parts: butt, inner mouth, inner ear, etc. The aggression comes out when the left back leg is touched around the hip joint. At one point, Jonathan told me about an accident she had while quite young, she “fell” off the stairwell banister (and by ‘fell’, he suspects an asshole ex-roommate pushed her). With youthful kitty reflexes she probably did land on her paws, but has since been sensitive to touches and petting in that area.

That accident on top of her current activity level being near zero makes me wonder if she likes it when we touch and sometimes not. She doesn’t position herself in a protective manner to block us from touching her fuzzy tail, her back paws, or even her hind-quarters. But she does escalate quickly to biting when she doesn’t like a particular petting action. She doesn’t bite me when I scoop my arm around her backside to position her tail and paws into a comfortable resting position. I don’t know. She’s a weird cat with people issues. =(